


The Man in the Mirror

by slipsthrufingers



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1635962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipsthrufingers/pseuds/slipsthrufingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the happily ever after doesn't quite go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man in the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Jenni for betareading. It was more rushed than I would've liked, but I didn't have time to re-write before posting.
> 
> Written for Imrihamun

 

 

Everyone in the castle was celebrating the wedding between their master and his new bride. Hundreds of guests attended the ceremony which went off without a hitch, none but a few knowing all the trials and tribulations that the happy couple had endured to get to this day. But that was not so important in their eyes. It was clear to anyone who saw the happy couple that they were truly in love, and that was what mattered. The feast went long into the night with wine and song flowing freely, until eventually the Prince and his new Princess retired to their marital chamber, and the guests took that as their sign to fetch their carriages and begin the journey home.

It was left, as it always was, to the servants to clean up the mess. They did not begrudge the task though, finding vigour and energy in being able to use their hands for the first time in years, instead of attempting to clear the table with broom-handles for hands or candlesticks for fingernails. The kitchen staff gossiped amongst themselves as they cleared the remains of the feast from the grand table, snacking on the leftovers as they went. They all agreed that the pork was the best the cook had made in years, though of course they had not tasted his pork in years because they had not had stomachs to digest it. They wondered amongst themselves how long it would take until they heard the pitter-patter of little feet about the castle.

Hélène had not worked in the kitchens for a long time, after being personally selected by the late queen to be one of her hand maidens. She had helped to dress and clothe the old woman in her last few years of life, and when the lady had sadly passed she obediently kept the lady's quarter's as clean as possible until the enchantment cast over the castle had left her no more than a simple mirror resting above the old woman's vanity. It had not been so bad. It was a little lonely, perhaps, but she had visitors every now and then and the time passed quickly enough.

"Now that she is my wife," The Prince had told her in private one afternoon not long after the wedding, "She is to have her own personal chambers in this wing of the castle. Prepare my mother's old chambers for her by the end of the week."

Hélène looked up, curiosity getting the better of her. "Pardon me for being rude, sir, but wouldn't you prefer to have your wife sleep closer to you? It is a long walk from here to the West Wing."

Hélène received a sharp look for her question, and she bowed her head to hide her blush. "I'm very sorry, sir, I should not have asked. I will have it ready by tomorrow." She said with a curtsey, and left as quickly as she could.

It was a blessing for her to finally be able to stretch her legs and move about the room she had so dutifully reflected for the past few years, and to clean the room she had watched slowly gather dust was strangely satisfying. She aired out the room, swept and polished the floor, changed the sheets and selected the finest roses from the garden to brighten up the chambers and make it fresh and new for the new Princess.

***

"Hélène," The princess said cautiously one day, as the maid servant helped her into the new blue dress the prince had bought for her. It was cut in the new fashion out of silks and furs from far off lands and was very expensive.

"Yes ma'am?" She answered dutifully as she pulled the strings of the corset tight.

"I think this room has a draught. Could you get someone to seal it off for me? I don't want to catch a cold."

Hélène nodded, "Of course, ma'am." She said, and when the princess went off to meet her prince to fulfil her royal duties for the day, Hélène had had one of the castle's handymen up into the room to help her search. She knew the room like the back of her own hand, after faithfully reflecting it for years and could not find anything that was different in the room, and the handyman searched high and low for a crack in the wall or near the window that could explain the errant breeze, but neither could find it and she could do nothing but apologise to her mistress when she retired later that evening.

"We looked high and low for what could cause the draught and we couldn't find anything." She said regretfully, "But perhaps if you feel it again you'll call for me and I'll see if I can find it and block it up for you until we can properly repair it. The castle is quite old and draughty but it is windier at night than it is during the day, and it may be easier for me to find."

"I'll do that, Hélène, thank you," The Princess said and she had left it at that.

It was several nights before the serving bell woke Hélène from her sleep in her quarters down the hall from the Princess's chambers. She quickly pulled on a nightgown, lit a candle and hurried down the corridor to answer her mistress's call. It was cold in the corridor, where no fire was lit to heat the room. She knocked politely on the wooden panelling of the door before seeing that the Princess had already opened it for her. She slipped inside and inspected the room once more under the watchful eye of the Princess, but again she could find nothing.

"It is draughty with the door open," She noted to the Princess.

The princess frowned and gathered her nightgown closer to her chest. She looked chilled to the bone. "I did not open it."

"Well, perhaps it is not closing properly. If you like, I'll get the locksmith to check the lock tomorrow."

But the lock was fine, and the hinges were perfect: they didn't creak or make any noise at all when they opened. It was strange, Hélène decided, that a door that worked perfectly during the day would unlock itself silently at night, especially when the door had not had any such problems in the past. She decided that she would stay up all night and watch to see if it happened again. The night was long and uneventful before Hélène's vigilant watch bore any results. A man of average height, dressed in tattered ill-fitting clothes skulked down the hall and stopped right outside the Princess's room. He stayed there silent and still for a minute before reaching out and opening the door so silently that Hélène was not even sure he was breathing. He finally opened the door, cracking it open just enough for him to be able to fit his head through the gap. The man stayed there for several minutes, staring through the gap at the Princess before he gently pushed the door closed, not completely as the latch was noisy to close and he obviously had perfected his voyeristic art down to the last detail.

She did not mention the discovery to the princess, fearing that it might upset her. She did, however, tell the Prince's personal man-servant, trusting that he would pass the message onto her master than one of the castle's servants was acting in a very improper manner.

It was organised the next night, for the princess to spend the night in the West Wing with the prince, so she would not be alarmed when Hélène caught the errant serving boy trying to open the door to catch a peek at the sleeping beauty. Their hope was, of course, to catch the boy and deliver his punishment without the Princess ever catching wind of what had been happening and that she would not be awokened when Hélène boxed the boy around the ears for his impunity. Hour after hour drifted by, however, and no servant boy arrived to sneak a peek through the lock of the Princess's door, nor did anyone at all walk past the door. Perhaps they did not come because they knew the Princess was spending the night with her prince, Hélène thought to herself, though she did not find it very likely. The Prince and Princess were usually very discrete about their encounters, Hélène and the Prince's personal man servant knew the plan, but everyone else was left to guess and ponder.

The boy couldn't be the Prince's manservant. He was an old man of sixty with a curved spine and distinctively loud footstep which heralded his arrival long before he reached his destination. It was so strange, a veritable mystery. She stayed up every night for weeks, hoping to catch the boy in the middle of his evil deed, but after that first night he was not to be seen. It was as if he were a ghost. None of the other servants had heard of a boy matching his description, and with no further clues to follow up, Hélène had to let it to rest.

***

Several months later, it became public knowledge that the princess was with child. She was not far along, only a month or two, but she and the Prince could not be happier to share the news with all they knew. The castle itself shifted into pre-emptive celebration mode, everyone happy to know that soon the Prince would have an heir that they could all dote upon in due course.

There was a crash in the night that reverberated throughout the entire castle. The mirror that hung high above the fireplace in the grand ballroom had been ripped off its hinges and thrown against the marble floor, shattering glass, paint and enamel everywhere and inflicting extensive damage to the ballroom's surface. Hélène was called in to help sweep the floors of the glass while the remains of the frame and the backing board were removed from the castle. No one could figure out how the mirror had fallen, though theories were tossed about freely amongst those who were cleaning up the mess.

"Perhaps it were a ghost." One of the handymen said as he lifted a beam of wood that had once been the side of the frame.

"It's seven years bad luck, to break a mirror."

"This castle doesn't need any more bad luck. Master Spirit, you keep it all to yourself, now, y'hear?" One of the kitchen girls yelled at the ceiling, sending the clean up crew into gales of laughter.

It took a half a day for the mess to be completely cleared, but it was barely a week until they were in the library cleaning up another mess. The library had tall glass windows that let in the sunlight in such a brilliant manner it almost never needed artificial light to keep it bright during the day. The Princess had been using the room as a makeshift art studio, painting a portrait of her husband. Unfortunately, someone had left a window open and the gale that had blown through the night before toppled the easel and the paints, ruining the painting and smearing the floorboards with a smattering of rainbow paint. The portrait could not be saved, which left the princess bitterly disappointed, upset that so much effort had gone to waste on an unsecured window pane.

The next day Hélène went to fetch fresh flowers for the Princess's chambers. With a bouquet of freshly picked roses in her arm, she pushed open the door to her mistress's room. It was dark inside. No candles were lit and the thick curtains were drawn tightly closed to allow the Princess more time to sleep in in her delicate state. But Hélène did not need the extra light; she knew the room like the back of her hand. She clicked the door closed behind her and set the flowers down on the small table in the corner, slowly replacing the old flowers with the new freshly picked roses. The sweet scent filled her senses and put a smile on her face. Already it felt fresher in the room.

She winced as a small twinge of pain shot through her finger. She brought her hand close to her face so she could inspect her hand. There was a cut there, quite deep but clean. Certainly not caused by the rose thorns she'd been handling. She moved the old flowers off the table with her uninjured hand and looked down at the table cloth. Small shards of glass caught the little light that filtered in from the gap in the doorway and reflected up in her eye. It was a hand mirror that had been smashed.

The door closed suddenly, as if blown shut by the wind, but the air in the room was deadly still and suddenly Hélène knew for certain that she was not alone.

"She was mine." A deep gruff voice muttered from the darkest corner of the room. Hélène's heart began to beat heavily in her chest. The voice was familiar, though she had not heard it in a long time.

"What?" She asked, voice quivering. It was too dark to see who it was that was talking.

"Her. She was mine. She fell in love with _me_ not him. It should be me who sleeps next to her, my child in her belly. _She was mine_."

Hélène edged closer to the curtain, hoping to pull them open to bathe the room in light and reveal whoever it is who'd crept in so suddenly. "I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand. My mistress is deeply in love with the Prince.. Perhaps you are mistaken."

"I am NOT mistaken." He hissed, and struck out violently against the vase of freshly picked roses. It smashed against the wall.

She reached out and finally touched the fabric of the curtain. She pulled it apart as quickly as she could, hoping to blind the man and provide herself with time to escape. But the Prince was too quick for her. His beastly eyes glinted red in the bright light as he grabbed the front of her dress and kicked the glass French doors open. He stepped out onto the balcony, one hand forcing her back with the other on her throat. "She was _mine_. We were Beauty and the _Beast_ and then _He_ came along and stole her away from me. The _Prince_ did not earn her love. _I did_."

Her hands pulled at the hand he held at her throat, and she kicked and squirmed, trying to break free of his hold. "You are the Prince. You're not the Beast." She sputtered out, unable to get free of his grasp.

"That's not how it went." He hissed. "Did they think that by a kiss and a happily ever after they could just get _rid_ of me? It's not that easy. Nothing is solved by a kiss. They'll regret discarding me so readily."

And with one quick shove, he pushed Hélène over the edge of the balcony and went back inside not waiting to hear her shatter like glass once she hit the ground.

 


End file.
